Confessions of a (former) Lab Rat

If you wander over to Alom Shaha ‘s place you might see a familiar face.

Go, get over there, write something. Especially if you’re not male.

Working in science has its ups and downs. One downside is that the pay does not appear to be equivalent to that in other sectors where there is a requirement for an equivalent level of training and effort. This is, They tell us, because maybe that what we do is really not all that important, or because we enjoy and therefore should be happy to be paid less well. A logical fallacy, but not one I’m interested in addressing right now.

Another ‘unfairness’, if you like, is the pressure to work long and unsociable hours. I’ve worked in places where starting at eight in the morning and finishing at six pm, without much of a lunch break, was seen as slacking. Oh, and I should have been there at the weekends, too. The hollow laughter that greeted various EU directives on the length of the working week was not only from the medics.

This pressure is keenly felt by those in the profession who have spouses and children. “Don’t you,” They ask, “want to succeed in science?” (I’m not convinced that working every hour God sends guarantees success anyway–time management skills are possibly more important). And maybe, then–if it costs my family and my life–I don’t want to succeed. It shouldn’t be like this. The whole ‘work/life balance’ question should not even come up, but the whole scientific work ethic seems to be opposed to having a family, or even ‘downtime’.

Perhaps this is the real reason women leave science more readily then men: they’re smarter and realize what’s important.

I have worked in departments where taking your full annual leave entitlement was seen as slacking off. To such an extent that here in Australia, where even the boss organizes sporting events in the middle of the working day and, today for example, the entire lab is skiving off down the beach for a Christmas barbecue, I still feel guilty about putting in a leave request. I hadn’t realized just what an effect this has had on me until I joked by email that a friend taking Thursday and Friday off in the week before Christmas was ‘slacking’. I was brought up quite short when she chastised me, and I apologize for my attitude.

Go home. Have time off. Chill out. Take the weekend off.

And have a very happy Christmas, one and all.

Taking a break from proofing/editing a manuscript (_In order to_ in place of simply To, intercalate between and display instead of have are my current bugbears. Plus the deliberate nixing of all my gerunds in favour of that. Grr), I see that everyone’s favourite cell biology journal has launched the JCB DataViewer.

This interesting little widget makes any published image as accessible to readers as if they had acquired it, according to Executive Editor Emma Hill. For microscopy junkies such as myself this is definitely an early Christmas present. You can re-scale and scroll through stacks, look at 2D projections of intensities and generally waste hours looking at someone else’s data.

The reader can thus access a maximum amount of information from published images, far more than can be gleaned from a single, two-dimensional optical slice.

which is all to the good, surely?

It might even help combat fraud: it’s a lot harder to disguise things in apparently ‘raw’ data than in the processed, ‘typical’ images we see in final articles. Especially if submitting all raw images becomes mandatory—see the Editorial for more discussion. JCB are quite hot on combatting scientific fraud (or ‘promoting scientific integrity’, to be slightly more positive), and this reminds me that I have a half-written weblog entry somewhere talking about it.

In the meantime, look! Pretty!

Now, come on, what did you really think I meant by that title, hmm?

We all love Ben Goldacre (I have to say that: I think they take away your Gilsons if you say anything bad about him). And his exposés of homeopathic nonsense, medical charlatanry, lousy reporting and triumphs of marketing over substance in drug trials and the like are legendary, a service for which he deserves an OBE, if not a couple of pints.

However, I do sometimes wonder if he should not pick his battles with a little more discernment. Be a little less gung-ho about matters. Because when he writes, again, about these ludicrous formulae that we see in the papers, I do wonder if he’s doing more harm than good.

I mean, surely, we know it’s all crap, don’t we? Not science—the ‘maths’ that gets published in the name of selling newspapers. Does anyone take that junk seriously? And, more to the point, is anyone’s perception of real maths and science affected so negatively by a formula describing the inappropriateness of Britney Spear’s wardrobe, or how to be happy, or whatever the hell some publicity-hungry editor (_a tautology, surely?—Ed._), comes up with next? (If it is so affected, then I don’t think Ben’s ranting is actually going to make any difference: such a person is too far gone already).

Although we know that the media, like the turny-thing it is, lies to us (from my own experience I estimate that approximately half the statements in any news story are incorrect to some degree), I suspect that the vast majority of people are sophisticated enough to realize that stories such as this are mindless fluff, and are not unduly influenced by them.

I could be wrong. Like the good scientist I am, I’d like this hypothesis to be tested.

But as Bryan Appleyard says, I’m not sure the Sun (or even the Torygraph) does that much harm to the perception or the cause of science. I think Ben would be better aiming his statistical dissecting kit at juicier targets.

All right, that’s that’s not strictly ‘bad science’, but then neither is reporting on a surreal columnist).

Getting into the Christmas feel, I feel I’d be remiss if, as a biologist, I didn’t link to this particular Smaller Than Life Advent Calendar:

Can you work this one out?

Where do you get your inspiration?

For me, the most difficult thing about writing is getting that initial germ of an idea. My Futures piece this week came about after the phrase “The suicide note of the world’s first immortal” came into my mind one sunny afternoon. Why? No idea. But from that initial kernel I thought about how someone might become immortal, within the realms of science and technology rather than magic and fantasy, and why they might be driven to such a state of despair.

My first Futures piece came to me one night as I walked home in the dark last autumn, looking up at the stars. Could I write a story, I thought to myself, about alien invaders and only at the end make it clear that we were the oppressors? The rather obvious political comment was an afterthought.

The story that I sent Henry for Mallorn (that he described as ‘C.S. Lewis on acid’) resulted from my fevered brain interpreting ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ as something quite different; and wondering what would happen to a necromancer who didn’t know the difference between ‘adjure’ and ‘abjure’. Similarly, the poems I’ve written generally spring from a single observation, or sometimes just the sound of words that like each other.

Once I have that inspiration I can work up a story or a poem into something halfway decent. That’s just a bit of hard work, a sprinkling of natural gifting and a lot of time (the latter is why I still have a notebook full of ideas, but no published novels. Yet).

But what about science?

Much of science comes out of what has gone before; incremental steps, small improvements or tweaks, logical progressions. But what about those truly inspired leaps of imagination? The things that can get you out of an experimental rut, or win a Nobel prize? Did the idea to write the code that resulted in finding this run of binding motifs this morning come from inspiration, or sheer cold, Vulcan logic?

There must have been a seminal moment when I thought “Ah! Why don’t I search my transcript sequences for the motif and plot the hits against the exon structure“–but I can’t remember it, nor why I thought it in the first place.

There must a kind of scientific inspiration similar to that experienced by creative types. But if so, how do we tap into it, encourage it?

What do you do for inspiration in the lab?

What happened? Are you all too busy?

The “Science as Sport”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2008/09/29/in-which-science-becomes-a-sport-–-hypothetically-speaking experiment seems to have fizzled out. Although a few people (nowhere near enough) enthusiastically joined up for the trial, they seemed to lose interest. Which is a shame because it was getting quite hot there for a while—I want to know what happened with Cameron’s protecting groups, Heather’s cells and Bob’s fit models.

“Our preliminary findings are that we need more data.”

And this science blogging “challenge”:http://network.nature.com/hubs/london/blog/2008/11/21/so-you’re-not-interested-in-a-free-trip-to-california-then thing?

So far, the response reminds me of a PE teacher’s brain (a vast, uninhabited desert with the occasional neuron crying because it’s lonely). I’m going to propose that me and the other guys on the judging panel split the prize money and go drinking instead.

Unless, in the three weeks that remain, you can persuade us otherwise.

I started answering some questions but realized that the margin wasn’t big enough for both of us.

London isn’t big enuff for both of us

Here’s the skinny. Yes I am currently a post-doc. For a while I’ve been “thinking”:http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2008/09/14/on-depression—a-personal-perspective about a career change, and … it’s happening.

I have just landed a job with these guys. I’ll be working on the Faculty of 1000 (Biology & Medicine )—although I very much suspect that I’ll get my fingers into other pies, although probably not the People’s Archive I can’t say exactly what’s happening (partly because I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but that’s all part of the fun) but we did all have an interesting time in London last week, and it’s looking quite exciting.

In short, I’m going to be a publishing mogul. Expect to see me laughing maniacally just before I dispose of secret agents in intricate and expensive ways. Actually, I’m kinda smarter than that.

Joking aside, I’ve only ever been a scientist. It’s not the first time I’ll have left academia: I spent two years working in a biotech company. I returned, but this time it’s likely to be a one-way ticket. While I do enjoy it, for various reasons I think it’s time to develop other skills, try new directions. I’m leaving my comfort zone, and it’s just a little scary, as well as (once I’m over my jet-lag) exciting. What constitutes a void, really, depends on one’s perspective.

It started, as things often do in this age, with an email.

Their project is exciting, and one I had admired from afar. But then there was the conversation over Skype—my night, their morning—the chairman saying more than I did, but the few words ‘we’ll fly you out and talk to you’ making more of an impression on me than anything else I could imagine. Hastily arranged flights, then—bagging a cheaper deal with my preferred carrier than their travel agents could find, and at a more convenient time. A nine hour layover in Singapore, made bearable by a spartan but comfortable room in a transit hotel.

A grey afternoon, wet: trains on the Piccadilly line skulking between stations as if ashamed to be seen overground. Purple and blue liveried coaches queuing up to take commuters home on a precipitous Friday afternoon. Towering Victorian architecture, sleek Intercity engines humming with repressed power: the scent of soot and concrete. Queues of people sidestepped to acquire an Oyster card: sufficient credit for a single journey. Damp pavements, the rounded peace of All Souls, the white and black art deco frontage of Langham Street; and a soft double bed crammed into a third floor room.

Old friendships renewed over warm pints and between sleepless nights. Hurrying along Euston Road, black-coated denizens as necessary and determined as corpuscles: squeezed and quantized and pulsed by traffic lights.

My first meeting in London was at the Nature offices. No, I didn’t really want coffee (I’ve met that machine “previously”:http://network.nature.com/people/rpg/blog/2008/09/11/on-science-blogging-2008—part-1) but the water was refreshing. A project for which I was eminently unqualified, but the energy of potentiality worth keeping as a back-up plan: the main act was in Middlesex House, back past the British Library, the Wellcome building, UCL.

A day of meetings; another of follow-ups and arguing with the chairman. The promise of an offer and a meeting with the company lawyer.

Tuesday evening: ever increasing circles around the Borough market (closed but still smelling of fresh produce) until I found the Market Porter: Amy recognizing me as I looked for the gents. Half a pint of whatever I was having, and then Jenny turned up: after getting her a glass of wine (not Merlot, not Shiraz—it’s good to know what you want) she asked me to look after Amy. So I retrieved her bag from the bag thief (not difficult: I could barely lift it myself), took her to a noodle bar and then two stops on the Jubilee line. To Jenny’s home, through the woods and frost-gilted grass then back to my hotel.

On Wednesday I found presents to take back to Sydney, met Henry for lunch and returned to Cleveland Street to talk to the head developer. Saw the company lawyer (and understood him, and he me, when we talked about assets and security and remuneration) and the chairman again. Could barely believe my ears, incoherent as I was through exhaustion and jet-lag. Could not, actually, wait to leave before he changed his mind.

Back in my tiny hotel room I sent some emails, showered:walked to Freuds. Jenny treated me to a celebratory Long Island ice tea.

Richard in his element: surrounded by incredibly smart and beautiful women

Thence to Black’s in Soho, to tear apart the artist’s vision over somewhat lacklustre (and dare I say it, 70s) food and a long table set for twelve. Most of those who had actually read the book claimed not to like it, but gave it surprisingly high marks. Refusing to be cowed by convention I rated ‘G’ out of ten—and added weight to the end of the table that wanted to judge the book by the standards of the time it was created, not those of twenty years later. I tried to point out that Doc Manhattan and Rorshach (with whom, perhaps surprisingly, most of us were least unsympathetic) and the rest of them were merely plot elements: the point of the story is not what happens, nor even speculative fiction as a setting for interesting characters; rather, Watchmen poses a moral dilemma that would make Jeremy Bentham proud.

They were having none of it, the bastards. I did, briefly, invoke the spectre of utilitarianism and said that even if you save the planet, killing three million people still makes you a mass murderer, and all the other ‘moral agents’ in the story—save one—were dishonorably complicit. What is the price of a new world order? What, actually, is the difference between someone (like Hitler) who murders millions of innocents because they want to make a ‘better’ world, and a character like Veidt, who murders millions of innocents on a gamble to save the world we have? One of these people was stopped at great human cost, the other went completely unpunished and uncensured.

Ultimately then, as the book asks, who watches the Watchman? No one? Rorshach?—and he’s dead.

But dessert was stupidly late (Tania never did get that glass of water), calculating the bill turned into an intellectual exercise equalled only by the watchmaker’s reincarnation, and I was almost asleep. Finally I made my way through Soho streets prowled by garbage trucks and desperate taxis, the December air biting my nose and cheeks, to pack my suitcase.

Now I am thirty five thousand feet over the Caspian Sea and the crescent moon—the same moon I saw above Oxford Circus last night and the same moon that that hangs above Sydney—reflects on the wing of this Airbus. In a curious dichotomy I am moving further away in space but closer in time to what is not ‘their’, now, but ‘our’: my project, my city, my home.

Watch this space.

Here I am, in the Great Metropole, being ripped off like nobody’s business for internet access (I am so getting an iPhone), jet-lagged out of my tiny little mind, and it’s all to do with a rather interesting project that you’ve probably never even heard of.

In addition to the rogue (curse my clean-shaven chin) Fiction Lab I’ll be meeting Henry for lunch.

Pray for my immortal soul.